


Chasing the Rose

by Ashesintheair



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Incest, the dark tower AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 13:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3812656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashesintheair/pseuds/Ashesintheair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short pieces for The Dark Tower/asoiaf AU created by Tora (tygettlannister on tumblr, where there is associated art). Windows into a universe rather than a linear story. </p>
<p>The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed... The world has moved on but there remains one last chance for honour. The Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

The scorching sun had baked all the moisture from the ground. It was cracked and dusty, and the horse’s hooves kept up a monotonous, dull thud on the hard soil. 

He slept sparingly, ate sparingly, drank sparingly. His existence was bent on the pursuit and even those things that were necessary were given but a passing nod. 

He knew he was getting closer. The man in black was closer than he had ever been, and with it, his last chance for honour. His last chance to cobble together some meaning and purpose.

The shape of a hut started to appear in the heat haze. The yellow hair of the gunslinger fell into his eyes, obscuring his vision and he reached up, lifting the hat from his head with one hand and using it to push his hair back out of his face as he settled it back down. 

There was a man on the step of the hut, older than middle years, and no threat at first sight. His hand did not hover near the guns he carried, not through lack of caution but through complete certainty that he could move fast enough, if it was required. He had been the youngest in living memory to pass the test. He was older now, but still quick, quick as a hawk, quick as a cat.

“Good day to ye, sai,” the man said, amiably enough. “I’ve food enough for two, if you’ve a mind to stop.”

“The man in black?”

“Passed by in the night.”

_I’m gaining ground. But the horse must rest and so must I if I am to be in a fit state when I catch him._

“The name’s Seaworth - passing strange for a desert dweller you might say. But we had ships once, before the world moved on. You’re a gunslinger. I’ve seen your sort before. Thought you were all dead and gone.”

“Not all of us.” The gunslinger swung down from the saddle and set about making the horse more comfortable - one eye always watching the Seaworth man. “Jaime,” he said at length. “Of House Lannister.”

Seaworth gave a low whistle. “You’re a long way from home.”

“The world has moved on.”

They ate together, exchanging few words, and the time came to rest. The man seemed trustworthy enough but Jaime couldn’t close his eyes, the cat green glimmer of them fixed on the shape of Seaworth as he slept. 

As it always did when he lay down to rest, his mind wandered back to Cersei. Cersei who had been golden and had filled the world, who had been his equal in everything until the guns had called. That had been the first crack in his perfect world. The fine lines had spread until there were thin, spider web cracks everywhere and all he had left was the pursuit and the chance for honour. 

She had called it _ka_. _Ka_ that they should have been born together, _ka_ that they should love as much as they did. In those golden days, it had been an easy excuse and he had wondered at the truth of it. Now he knew it was bitter _ka_ , _ka_ like a great wind, and there had been no escaping it.

He remembered the yellow hair falling through his fingers and her laughter ringing in his ears. The laughter had stopped with the guns. When she had been told that she could not be a gunslinger, that there was no place for her in that order, she had stopped laughing and the smile never came quite so easily to her lips.

He remembered being caught by their mother, her hand twisted in his hair as she dragged him out of his sister’s room and away. “You have forgotten the face of your father.” _No, mother. No, I haven’t. But the face of my sister is my world. You don’t understand. It was_ ka _._

Last, and it always came though he would try not to remember this part, was the wildfire. The wildfire and Cersei, flames leaping along the yellow of her hair, while she screamed, though she had vowed never to scream for them. She didn’t beg. The screaming had been beyond her control but she would not, could not beg. Not for forgiveness, not for mercy. 

He didn’t sleep. He never could with that image dancing just out of his reach. The horse at least would be rested. He saw the dawn, saw Seaworth stir, and spoke. 

“The man in black. Did he have anyone with him?”

“He passed by in the dark, sai. I couldn’t rightly say. There was one horse, not two. But one horse may carry two.”

The gunslinger gave a sharp nod of thanks and set off in pursuit again. The man in black was waiting, and with him, if rumour was to be believed, Sansa Stark. His last chance for honour.


	2. Chapter 2

The glass tumbler clicked as he set it back down on the bar. The light that dappled through the shutters caught smooth planes of ice and made the whisky glow.

He heard the door but didn’t turn. He knew her by her footsteps alone.

She settled herself at the bar next to him and he tipped his hat carefully with two fingertips.

“How goes it?” he asked.

“The same as always.” She shrugged and he turned to look. She was small, with pale hair, but there was iron in her face. It was just as well. The iron was all that kept the town together. Sometimes they called her Dinh, sometimes just Mother but everyone knew the name of Daenerys Stormborn and everyone understood that her word was law here, in the town of misfits and miscreants that she had cobbled together.

No one had believed that she could do it, after her husband had died. No one had ever dreamed that she could be something in her own right. Even Jorah had wondered if she would really be able to pull it all together, but the blood that ran in her veins was old blood, blood from a time before the world had moved on. Mistakes had been made, and she was learning, but something in her blood sang out and called her to lead. There was another song in her blood, one of fire, and he knew that song too.

Dany set a small wooden chest on the bar top and tapped it. “Are you ready?”

“I’m no gunslinger, Daenerys. I’ve told you that before.”

She ignored the words and flipped the chest open. “Three,” she said softly. “Three, but I can’t wield three alone. I can’t even use one of them yet, not well, not well enough. Three guns, Jorah Mormont. One from my father, one from the brother whose face I never saw and one from the brother whose face I knew too well. I wonder if things would have been different if Viserys had ever properly been taught.”

“Viserys should never have been allowed to so much as hold it,” Jorah said shortly.

“You have to teach me what you know.”

There was no refusing her, he knew that. There was no refusing the song of fire that ran through her veins. “I know very little. I cannot teach you this thing.”

Her hand lingered on the cold metal for a moment, and then she closed the lid. “You were run out, I know that. You were run out and you found your way to us, to me. But you must have learned something there.”

“It was all for a woman. It always is, in the end.” He tilted the glass in front of him, just enough to make the ice tinkle gently. His voice softened and his eyes seemed far away, looking at some distant object that Dany could not see. “ _I do not aim with my hand. He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father._ ”

“I never knew my father’s face. Do you think that matters?”

Jorah’s head jerked back to her, startled and unaware he had been speaking out loud. “I’m a failure, cast out. I failed my test, do you understand? I have no right to touch those guns of yours, let alone show you how to use them.”

Her lips pursed but she seemed resigned. The iron and the fire were both still there - she hadn’t given up. But it was a fight for another day. “Have you ever seen snow, Jorah?”

If he was perplexed by the sudden change in direction, he didn’t show it. “Snow? Yes, once or twice. A long time ago. When I was young and the world was different. Or perhaps I was different. It’s hard to remember.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s… light. It feels like nothing at all in your hand. Cold, of course, like ice, but it doesn’t burn so much. It settles like gossamer, but you can pack it together tight, and then it becomes heavy and you can mould it or shape it how you wish. It is…” He searched for the words and tilted the glass again to peer into the bottom, as though the right words might be found there. “It is a hard thing to describe.”

“One day, I’m going to see some for myself.” It was a ridiculous statement. The world seemed nothing but wasteland and desert these days. He would be surprised if anyone would ever see snow ever again. But he didn’t laugh. There was too much ferocity in her voice to make it a laughing matter. “I will take these people of mine, and I will learn to use the weapons of my father and my brothers, and I will find the snow.”

Perhaps at last, it was the ferocity of it that persuaded him. Perhaps it was the image, the wonderful image of searching for something he had thought lost. Perhaps it was the way Daenerys feverishly seemed to cling to that wooden chest, the way she desperately sought her past to find her future. Perhaps it was simply that he had grown to love her, and there was more truth in that than in anything else he had found.

“Here. Perhaps I can show you a little of what they showed me, long ago.”


	3. Chapter 3

The man in black fled through the desert and the gunslinger followed.

A distant shape blossomed with detail as he rode. A way station. He wondered if his quarry had stopped. Regardless, he needed water. The delay could not be helped.

A light patina of dust covered the square panes of the windows. The gunslinger scouted around the building and found the blackened remains of a fire. He had been here. And not one hollow in the dust, but two. The closest thing he had ever had to confirmation that he was right. 

A faint smell of dust hit his senses and he spun, the gun in his hand and ready before he had completed the movement. A boy stood but a few feet away. He had crept close before kicking up the dirt, frighteningly close had it been anyone but a boy. Brown hair, brown eyes, as brown and honest as the dirt. He holstered the pistol. _I have not yet forgotten the face of my father._

“You saw the one who made camp here?” He did not ask if the boy had been seen. He would not be alive if he had.

There was a nod. 

“When?”

“Two nights ago.”

There was uneasy silence and then the boy cocked his head to one side, bird like, and the gunslinger was uncomfortably reminded of his dreams of late. 

“I’m Bran.”

“A fine name.” It had been a lifetime since he had spoken with a child, since he had tried to gentle the fire that drove him. “Jaime of… Of Casterly.” That was a place so far back in his memory now that the name was a dream, and one it hurt to conjure. 

“There were two of them,” Bran volunteered. “I dream…”

“The Rose?” he asked quickly.

“A bird. A bird who sings in my dreams. But sometimes she’s the lady who was by the fire.”

“She can be many things.” _She’s my last chance now. For honour’s sake._

“The man in black… I didn’t like how he looked at h-“

The ground opened beneath their feet, a great crack splitting the earth. Jaime found his feet quickly and reached a hand to the boy, but Bran had slipped and was clinging to the rock, a few feet into the chasm. He didn’t cry out but looked imploringly up at the gunslinger. 

_He dreams of the Rose, as do I. We are_ ka-tet _._ He dropped to his stomach and reached down to grasp Bran’s hand. Before he could close his fingers about the small wrist, another hand flickered in his peripheral vision. 

Slender, white fingers gripped the rock. She had burned. She had burned until there was nothing left but that hand… It was so real. She hung against the rock. She didn’t beg, for that would not have been her. Cersei had never begged. Not even while she burned. She looked at him with eyes that matched his own and he reached for her. It was an unconscious movement, though if he had been aware, he would have done it anyway. She couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be more than a memory. But he couldn’t take the chance. 

The boy cried out once as he fell. The outline of his body against the black chasm as he fell would haunt Jaime’s dreams for nights to come, twisted with visions of the Rose and of Cersei, laughing in the flames.


End file.
